JC's Trek Talk

Starfleet Academy Series Premiere Review Addendum: The Title Sequence Although not seen in the pilot episode "Kids These Days", the Star Trek Starfleet Academy title sequence (first seen in episode 2 "Beta Test") deserves a close look and reaction.  These are my opinions. The Sequence Heavy on the theme of growing: the seed sprouting, growing into the plant, and eventually the tree, the buildings being built.  And of course the area around the buildings is the shape of the Star Trek delta-yawn.  The tree sprouting flowers, the flower petals flying through the Academy campus/USS Athena corridors and the atrium/courtyard.  And then the show's title over a skylight window conveniently shaped like the delta.  Ending over a wide shot of the Athena landed on Earth at San Francisco.  Fade to black. The Visuals As I mentioned above, heavy of the themes of growing and building.  But that doesn't really fully tell the series story.  It doesn't really say wh...

Starfleet Academy Series Premiere Review "Kids These Days" Following a special Star Trek 60th Anniversary Intro, the episode opens with a main character giving a speech, clearly a callback to the 'Space, the Final Frontier' speeches, as well as Una's speech at the beginning of Strange New Worlds eponymous pilot.  We get a little flashback to Caleb Mir as a child that establishes Nus Braka (Paul Giamatti), a half Tellarite-Half Klingon as the bad guy and Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) in a DIS season 3 uniform and badge.  The stardate on screen 853724.6, gives the year of approximately 3177.  Ake delivers starfleet's ruling that Caleb's mother Anisha Mir (Tatiana Maslany) is to be imprisoned, separated from her son.  Ake seems to have very little empathy for the situation at hand.  Nahla mentions Caleb going to Bajor.  Caleb escapes the "facility" by stealing Nahla's badge.  Next we see Caleb (Sandro Rosta) as a young adult with a rap sheet.  After ...

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Starfleet Academy's 32nd century Starfleet Ships I am not a fan of the 32nd century Starfleet ship designs from Star Trek Discovery and the upcoming Starfleet Academy series.  I get that these are designs from a far future when new technologies and techniques have been developed by Starfleet, but there are a number of things about these ships that just don't work for me. Overall Esthetics I know that these are designs from the 31st and 32nd centuries when technologies have evolved and changed over the centuries and new technologies have been developed and discovered (see programmable matter).  That said, many of these designs don't look remotely Starfleet.   The Courage and Eisenberg classes look much more at home as battleships in some alien fleet.   The Mars Class with it's crab claw looking nacelles(?) is interesting, but again not very Starfleet.  The design would much better fit an alien ship. ...

Thoughts on Starfleet Academy's Uniforms and Combadges The two trailers and small number of pictures released to date for the upcoming Starfleet Academy gives us a pretty good look at the series uniforms and combadge.  Some thoughts: Starting with Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) in the standard(?) instructor(?) uniform.  The asymmetric bottom is very much in keeping with Star Trek Discovery's 32nd century uniforms.  Not entirely sure why they didn't just use the Discovery season 4-5 uniforms.  Overall not a huge fan of this one.  The silver and black stripe just looks strange. Robert Picardo as The Doctor (EMH) from Voyager.  His special uniform (flag officer?) is mostly white, the color for medical in Star Trek Discovery.  It still has the weird asymmetric bottom (see above). Here we see Lura Thok in a special uniform with Discovery style gorgets showing her rank.  A dress uniform maybe? Holly Hunter as Nahla Ake in what I guess is an officers uniform....

The Prime Directive Case Studies The following is pulled from the Starfleet Academy command school curriculum for Command 101: The Prime Directive General Order 1.  The Prime Directive.  The Federations most sacred regulation.  It prohibits Federation citizens from knowingly or willfully interfering in the natural evolution, development and internal affairs of other cultures, especially those less advanced than the Federation (for planets or cultures who have not yet developed warp travel, all contact is prohibited).  The consequences short term and long term of interference to a civilizations cultural development and evolution are unimaginable, and often irreversible.   Consider these two incidents: Omega IV On stardate 4732.4 Captain Ronald Tracey of the USS Exeter NCC-1672 beamed down to the surface of Omega IV after his crew contracted and succumbed to a viral infection brought aboard by an away team.  Captain Tracey exposed himself and his advance...

Star Trek Starfleet Academy Trailer A new trailer for Star Trek Starfleet Academy dropped over the weekend at NYCC. My thoughts: We get a few good views of the USS Athena NCC-392023, the ship that apparently houses Starfleet Academy.  There's a flashback with Nahla Ake in a Discovery season 3 style uniform.  The dialogue establishes that she has some kind of connection with Caleb Mir.  More of Paul Giamatti as the bad guy (though I'm not too sure why this series needs one). We see Tig Notoro (Jett Reno), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly) and Robert Picardo om various scenes with with cadets, ok cool.   We get a shot of the Athena's bridge, which I still think looks a bit too much like he SNW esthetic for 900 years hence. Lots of shots of character moments, cadet camaraderie, training, but mostly just eye candy.  Like Discovery this series looks to put a lot of focus on character drama, relationships, connections.  I'm worried that it could overpower the seri...

Fan Reaction to Starfleet Academy's Jem'Hadar/Klingon Hybrid Character: A Rant I don't understand all this hate/vitriol online suddenly about the female Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid character from Starfleet Academy. People saying: "oh there can't be a female Jem'Hadar because the Jem'Hadar were all males". In the 24th century. There were no female Jem'Hadar in the 24th century because they were all genetically engineered (essentially clones "bred" not born) to be male. The Dominion genetically engineered the Jem'Hadar to be super soldiers and engineered/cloned them all to be male (being clones there was no need for women, also the Dominion mindset at the time being that having women would have made them weak). Things change over 800+ years. After returning to the Great Link Odo could have changed the Dominion and ultimately caused them to decide to clone female Jem'Hadar. For all we know the Dominion as it was in the 24th century ...

 Star Trek Starfleet Academy First Pictures/Teaser Trailer First Impressions This past week the first pictures and trailer for the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series have been released.  As much as I'm not really that interested in the series overall I've decided to take a look at the pictures and trailer and share my initial thoughts. Holly Hunter as Captain Nahla Ake, a part-Lanthanite and the commandant of Starfleet Academy Ok.  She appears to be sitting on a very SNW-esque bridge.  Lanthanite is obviously a reference to Pelia (Carol Kane) in SNW Robert Picardo returning as the EMH from Voyager and Prodigy He has a unique uniform...maybe a professor emeritus or something? Tig Notaro as Jett Reno, returning from Discovery The logical guess would be as an engineering professor.  Very Discovery-esque uniform, though slightly different. Gina Yashere as Cmdr. Lura Thot, a half Klingon/half Jem Hadar Interesting.  Maybe we'll get some lore building a...